Transcontinental Lament
by Rashaka
Summary: Episode 25 and Roy Mustang. A fivepart vignette for dreams, for fools, for a world that moves on. Part 2 posted.
1. Rockefeller Tall

This will be a 5-part story set in the timeline of episode 25. There are a multitude of unwanted spoilers for that episode included in this story, starting in the second chapter but the real wicked one will appear in chapter 3. If you have not seen the series up through episode 25 or its manga equivalent I earnestly suggest that you do not read any further.

Chapter titles are partially inspired by the novel _Atlas Shrugged_, by Ayn Rand, though neither any prose nor characters of her book are used in this fanfiction.  
Full Metal Alchemist characters and concepts are used liberally and without permission.

In writing this I tried to keep in mind all the stuff I learned when I read _On Writing_, by novelist Stephen King, mainly: adverbs are Teh Evil; don't be too chicken to cut out your favorite part cause its your favorite part because if it doesn't fit it doesn't fit; and minor characters believe themselves to people too.

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_Chapter 1 - Rockefeller Tall_

Evening rolled past Roy Mustang's window with a quiet rumble, withering slowly into nightfall with each lonely mile. Desert turned to swirling plains, then grass gave way to looming trees. The hours to Central City passed in the tapping of the colonel's fingers and the shifting of his boots against the carpet. With each bump of the train tracks his heart plunged further into worry, and even as he told himself it would be alright he could not stop looking to the horizon, where all sorts of shit was happening that he had no grip on.

A sturdy pane of glass separated him from the darkness, and the illusion of safety it presented only aggravated him further. He glared past it, knowing that trains can only go so fast and none of his alchemic talent could prod this one to a higher velocity. He must wait, just like everyone else. Wait until they arrived. Wait until he could make a call from the station. Wait until he could see if he was needed. Wait and see. _Wait and see._ It was a dirty phrase in his mind, an idiom symptomatic of everything he hated about the world and sometimes people too: inaction; lack of forethought; lack of control. It was a child's response to one's problems, and only a child truly believed that waiting and seeing would bring any worthwhile results. This had pretty much always been Roy's outlook.

When the colonel was young (as all cynics were once) the boy across the street had decided to break into school after-hours to steal all the chairs in the classroom and put them in a cornfield half a mile away. A splendid prank for his age—tricky enough to become a small-time legend with the younger set, simple enough to pull in one night with one pair of hands. The problem was that for once Mustang was left to find out about it with everyone else.

"So you won't be in trouble again with your pop," the eleven-year-old had said with a snicker, pushing his spectacles up on his nose and favoring Roy with a superior grin. "Besides, I need someone on the outside when the national military comes for me and my parents and all my cousins and aunts and uncles."

Mustang remembered tackling the boy to the rocky grass, punching for all he was worth and roaring that he would never ever bring pie or books to such a traitor no matter how foul the dungeon he was thrown into, or how rarely he got to go outside. He could eat rats think about all the trees Roy would be climbing and the creeks he would be swimming in while the other wasted away into a horrible mummified state.

As a rule, Mustang didn't care for being the one who had scramble to catch up, the one who needed to be told the big picture because he couldn't discover it for himself. He hadn't like it at ten and it had nearly killed him at twenty. He spent a decade after one bloody Ishbal night building his life up in such a way that he didn't have to think about helplessly drowning on the outside of the big picture, because he would have already trudged waist-deep into it. Deep into the politics, deep into the lies, deep into the promises. From his place in the center of the mud pile Roy gave the orders, and Roy laid out the plans, and the military had no need to come for them, because they both ran to it.

And they had run to it together. Sure, his friend went to law school and took a desk job, and Roy studied science till he was doing arrays even when taking a shit. But while they chose different roads they still headed in the same direction, still talked and met and passed the occasional word that they had no business passing. They made life easier for each other. And then Ishbal happened, and after that Maes made life easier for Roy.


	2. Atlas & Axle

Here it is, after a long wait. Sorry it took 6 months. Hopefully the next update will be much sooner. :) The spoilers really start to kick in with this chapter, which is a scene taken from the anime and somewhat elaborated on.

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Chapter 2 - Atlas & Axle

_He opened the door to a familiar pair of glasses. The bright lights of the hallway must have been making Roy pale, because it took a bit of time for the sad surprise on Maes's face to transform into the habitual smile._

"_This is a first-class apple pie I got my girlfriend to bake just for you. How 'bout it?"_

_Roy thought about the situation for a moment, pondering the advantages. He could take the pie and the mollycoddling that came with it, or he could turn his old friend away again and retreat to his cave. And yet—Maes was smiling, and Roy loved that smile. Just like the smiling man knew Roy had claimed to love Gracia's cooking, once upon a time. So he lifted the corners of his mouth in something closer to irony than amusement, and stepped backward._

"_Roy." And here is where the other shoe fell._

"_Yeah. It's exactly what you think."_

_The room was a pigsty; papers and clothing littered the corners, and books— books were fucking _everywhere._ Stacks of them and piles of them, thrown aside like so much junk by a man Maes knew held the printed word to be as sacred as religion. It was disconcerting, out of character, and it caught Maes for a moment, until he saw what lay underneath the books, below the empty bottles and the files and the tomes._

_Array after array, covering nearly every inch of the apartment floor. Some were in chalk, some were in paint, and some looked like they might have been in blood or oil. Or alcohol. In the dim light he could see them drawn on the walls and even some of the furniture._

_"My god." Maes was familiar enough with Roy's line of work to know the difference between biological and chemical alchemy, and the shape of some of these arrays was not lost on him. Roy was not a biological alchemist, and this was not normal._

"_I don't _get_ alchemy," Maes snapped, grabbing his friend by the shirt and forcing the other man to look him in the eyes. "But there isone thing I do know! There's only one kind oftaboo in alchemy, and those who commit it..."_

_Roy gave a dry chuckle, and didn't even try to struggle out of his grip. "Don't worry. I haven't done anything."_

_It was like listening to a corpse speak. Maes let him go. "You were going to."_

_Roy put his hands in his trouser pockets, and almost smiled. "A lot of people died. I mean, I killed a lot of people."_

"_It was war."_

_Roy looked away, gaze drifting back down to the carpet of arrays. "You weren't there."_

"_That's right, Roy, and if you didn't want to kill people, you should've requested a desk job like me, and never stepped into that fucking exam room." Roy didn't respond. "Did you think that you would be _helping_ if you became a 'true' alchemist and revived a couple of those dead civilians?"_

"_Well, I don't know..." That smirk. Maes hated that smirk. It was pathetic and cruel and didn't belong on Roy's face._

_A deep sound of packing flesh filled the little room when Lt. Hughes's fist collided with his best friend's cheek. "Damn it! Is human alchemy so easy to commit that you need to study it for just a little while?"_

_The other man just touched his darkening jaw and refused to answer. Maes was incensed by this whole display, and it was bring out his bitterer side. "Or did you want to die, Roy? If that's the case, there are easier ways." _/Like that sidearm you carry, old friend. I'm sure you've thought about that./

"_I…" Roy took a hollow, shuddering breath. "I couldn't do it. I was afraid. All those people I've killed...yet _I _was afraid of dying. I guess that's just the kind of coward I really am, deep down."_

"_Everyone is afraid of dying."_

_A grimace, and a faraway look. "Still, even a life like mine can have some use."_

_Maes blinked, and it was like he was looking through his glasses at different person. A different Roy Mustang. This Mustang set his shoulders in determination, and turned to stare at his best friend with absolute focus._

"_Maes, I've decided..."_


End file.
